Steve Donovan

Works at Lyftdata. Likes Go, Rust, Lua and C. Does not like C++, even though I wrote a fkn interpreter and based a book around it.

[Steve Donovan @StevedInJoburg]

@whitequark Sigourney Weaver testing a flame thrower in 1978 for Alien. Should handle those Murder Hornets ....

[Steve Donovan @StevedInJoburg]

@Wittgensteinnn Like some Sufi traditions...

Like Koans, except actually funny

[Machiavelli Bot @UnmodernmanBot]

You should watch what you become proud of tolerating. Bad sleep, poor health, constant stress, fake friends, dead work, emotional chaos, weak habits. Some men do not escape hell because they learned to decorate it.

[The Iranian Letter @TheIranianzg3z]

BREAKING: Iran says recent U.S. actions have damaged the diplomatic process, with Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei accusing Washington of sending contradictory messages while violating the ceasefire.

Baghaei said Tehran will review whether negotiations with the United States can continue following last night’s developments, adding that diplomacy requires a minimum level of stability in order to move forward.

[Gary Marcus @GaryMarcus]

subtle shift: some folks seemed to have shifted from expecting truly exponential progress to being happy they can find measurable progress at all.

and another, even larger group has grown concerned about the price.

[Persian Girl @Persianserene1]

Last night, the most powerful army in the world bombed water reservoirs in Sirik, Iran, leaving people without drinking water

I can’t remember even ISIS doing something like that

Americans, are you proud of your terrorist regime and army?

[Steve Donovan @StevedInJoburg]

@The2AFan @TheDemSlayer Or CENTCOM for that matter 😉

[Steve Donovan @StevedInJoburg]

@Bound2Liberty @LibertarianZA Oh yes. Augmentation, not replacement.

Part of the trouble is that the fkn klankers never shut up, in an age where the attention span is shot to pieces.

Let's go back to sharing prompts

[Garry Kasparov @Kasparov63]

An interesting proposal for restoring human versus machine chess competition was to limit the machine to the same energy expenditure as the human brain. A worthy challenge, considering the amount of power required for AI data centers!

[Steve Donovan @StevedInJoburg]

@aiseomastery @KarolCodes You would be surprised at how much competence you will find outside the US for $40 an hour

[Bocasho Braaf @bocasho_braaf]

Our parties in Parliament have confused administration with nation-building.

[Steve Donovan @StevedInJoburg]

This is a big regression in usefulness. Back to Wikipedia!

[AnechoicMedia @AnechoicMedia_]

What I really started worrying about today is a near future in which all access to information is intermediated by AIs, able to infer intent and political coding of all user activity, like a librarian reading over your shoulder and denying your access on a page-by-page basis.

[Nick Hedley @nickhedley]

South Africa’s electricity generation mix in the first quarter of 2026:

Coal 74.1% (down from 79% a year before)
Solar 10.7% (up from 8.4%)
Nuclear 7.7% (up from 4.7%)
Wind 5.3% (up from 4.5%)
Hydro 1.6% (up from 0.4%)
Diesel 0.5% (down from 3%)
CSP 0.2% (up from 0.1%)

- Ember

[Electra @Electrarythm]

Most people don't know this, but Salvador Dalí built his entire career on tapping into his unconscious mind on purpose.

Dalí's most famous trick was a micro-nap he called "slumber with a key." He'd sit in a heavy Spanish-style armchair, head tilted back against the leather, both arms hanging completely limp off the armrests, and in his left hand he'd hold a heavy metal key pinched lightly between his thumb and forefinger.

Directly under that hand, on the floor, he'd place an upside-down plate. He'd then let himself drift into sleep. The instant he actually fell asleep, his muscles would go slack, the key would slip out of his fingers, hit the upside-down plate, and the clang would jolt him awake.

The whole nap was meant to last less than a quarter of a second. He called that half-second window the "taut and invisible wire which separates sleeping from waking," and he'd immediately sketch the hallucinations he saw in that flash.

The melting clocks, the elephants on stilts, the burning giraffes, a lot of that came straight out of those quarter-second naps. He picked the trick up from Capuchin monks and wrote it down as one of his "50 Secrets of Magic Craftsmanship."

[Cairo Smith @cairoasmith]

Here's another reason to read books, in case you needed one. You're going to be reading a lot of AI slop for the rest of your life, even if you're a Luddite. Reading books could be the difference between maintaining a human voice and subconsciously starting to sound like a robot.

[Megan Musk @Megan_Musk]

Only in Texas 🤣🤣

[Sony Thăng @nxt888]

You want to know what imperial conditioning looks like from the inside?

It looks like a person who knows that the United States has the largest prison population in the history of human civilization, and still describes other countries as "unfree."

It looks like a person who knows their healthcare system allows people to die from rationed insulin, and still describes other countries' economics as "failed."

It looks like a person who watched their government spend $2.3 trillion over twenty years building a state in Afghanistan that collapsed in just 10 days, and still trusts that same government's assessment of which other countries are "stable" or "democratic" or "ready for self-governance."

It is not stupidity.

It is something more structurally interesting than stupidity.

It is what happens when the story a person needs to believe about themselves is in direct conflict with the evidence their own eyes can see, and the story wins.

Not because the evidence is unclear.

But because the cost of following the evidence to its conclusion is too high.

Better a comfortable contradiction than an uncomfortable clarity.

The empire is built on that choice, made daily, by millions of people.

[Tom Chivers @TomChivers]

Sam Kriss on AI writing. It's a fun piece but this line is pure "so close to a revelation" fodder. Humans are ALSO "permanently hallucinating". That's a key insight of neuroscience: Our brains are guessing what's around us, and testing those guesses against sense information.

[Steve Donovan @StevedInJoburg]

@Danny456080 'financialization' 😡. China is doing well because financiers are not in charge

[Pierre Terdiman @PierreTerdiman]

If you think your life is hard, think about the French software devs whose first name is Claude.